I already paid him a fee to set things up, but €60 for 2 minutes is pushing it a bit. A lot of people will not dispute for fear that something is wrong with them and don't want to cause problems
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Private medical consultation - €250!!
- Thread starter jan
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NiallSparky
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How were they trailed exactly? A large part of the work of a consultant is done on-call or remotely.
Unless RTÉ were hacking their phones or getting their call logs then I don't think they have a leg to stand on with their assertion. It's not really proof of anything.
Can't remember now but it wasn't a frivolous claim.
Consultants are a law unto themselves with no line manager. They come and go as they please unchecked.
From personal experience, all consultants who do private work have appointments 9-5 M-F despite being contracted for 39 hours with the HSE. And no they did not work any nights.
Do you have a vested interest by any chance?
Consultant worked less than 13 hours per week
RTÉ Investigates has found a failure by the HSE and hospital managements to properly implement the 2008 Hospital Consultants' Contract across acute public hospitals.
My mother was a senior nurse prior to her retirement. She worked with a public consultant for a decade in one of the large regional hospitals and never witnessed this person see a single public patient. This person just worked their private list - s/he was never challenged. My mum also witnessed others who saw very few public patients - far below their allotted public hours. She is retired five years now but this was her consistent experience over her career.
That is the norm unfortunately. This is criminal behaviour but no action is taken despite it being common knowledge
Totally misleading to say it is the norm. The vast majority of consultants hold type B contracts which do not permit them to do any offsite private practice. Look at publicjobs.ie you will see that virtually all posts that are advertised or were advertised in the last 13 years are type B posts. Anyone holding a type A contract can claim no private fees at all. RTE followed several consultants who probably held old type II contracts. These have not been issued since before 2008 and even then were the least common contract held. A type I contract was the most common pre 2008 which also forbids off site private work. So please don’t make accusations that are not true. Consultants do have line managers they are called clinical directors and hospital managers and they do proactively ensure that consultants adhere to the terms of their contracts. Any anecdotal experience that people recount here may have occurred historically but do not occur now. The vast majority of consultants fulfil all their contracted hours in public hospitals, often way beyond their 39 hr week. Many consultants choose to work in private hospitals exclusively and therefore do not hold or may resign from their public hospital jobs prior to doing so. Some hold type C contracts which they must apply to their hospital manager and subsequently obtain CAAC approval. This contract reduces their public hospital commitment and salary, but these are not commonly sought. If someone is breaching their public contracted hours then they can be reported to their hospital manager/ clinical director and it will be acted on.
While technically consultants may have line managers, in reality, they can pretty much do as they want. I don't mean this in terms of public vs private but while in the public system. Some see lots of patients, some choose to not see a lot of patients, some focus on teaching, some on research. There seems to be little to no standardisation.